Audio conferencing has grown in popularity. Commonly, audio systems use a tabletop microphone to detect input from conference participants. Participants must therefore gather relatively close to the microphone in order to assure audio quality, and also must always be aware of the direction in which they are speaking. As a result, such systems intrude on the meeting. In addition, as the microphones are omni-directional and located on the tabletop, they can pick up and transmit to the remote participants undesirable ambient noise. Common sources of unwanted ambient noise include table noise, sidebar conversations, laptop keyboard clicks, coffee cup clinks, etc. These undesired audio sources can be very damaging to the efficiency, focus, and productivity of conference meetings, especially for far-end (remote) participants in the conference.
Applicants have disclosed novel systems and methods for overcoming these problems by using multiple wireless microphones in communication with a base station. Exemplary devices are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2006/0217162 to Bodley et al. As more wireless microphones are introduced into a conference environment, however, additional base stations must also be deployed to communicate with the microphones. The growing number of devices (both microphones and base stations) can introduce problems by crowding the available RF (radio frequency) spectrum, especially where, for example, time division encoding of signals is employed.
Accordingly, there is a need for a simple system that can synchronize a plurality of base stations in a given conferencing environment so as to optimize the use of available RF spectrum and more efficiently support multiple wireless devices.